Most of my articles for this journal focus on managing the risk of flying piston-powered general aviation aircraft, with examples of good and poor risk management. But risk management is at least equally critical in the world of operating airliners and turbine-powered transport category aircraft. Recent air carrier accidents provide illustration and lessons relevant to operating small general aviation aircraft, especially when designing and certifying them. In fact, and just as during flight operations, the job of managing risk in the design and certification is to identify, assess and mitigate that risk. These procedures apply even more objectively when using rigid design criteria, especially when they involve transport category aircraft.
To illustrate this, let’s once again refer to the standard risk assessment matrix, below, which is used to assess risk based on the joint impact of an event’s likelihood and its severity. In the operations world, using this matrix can be somewhat subjective. When applying the “holy trinity” of risk management—identify, assess, mitigate—assessment can be the most difficult of the three functions to perform effectively. Nevertheless, training and practice can enable the average general aviation pilot to assess risk with some degree of accuracy.
